Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Saving Trace Output to a Table

The Save to Table option writes the trace output directly to a SQL Server table as the trace is running. Having the data in a SQL table provides a great deal of flexibility for analyzing the data. You can use the full power of Transact-SQL against the table, including sorting, grouping, and more complex search conditions that are not available through the SQL Profiler filters.

You need to consider both the disk space requirements and impact on performance when the Save to Table option is used. The Profiler provides an option, Set Maximum Rows (in Thousands), to limit the amount of output generated from the trace. The performance impact depends on the volume of data being written to the table. Generally, you should ...